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Jones is hoping to syndicate programming expressly designed for HD-2's and -3's.
They know that Clear Channel and the other big stakeholders are so pig-headed that they can't face the truth -- that Iniquity's Huge Disaster Radio system is abjectly failing in the marketplace -- and that they'll keep throwing good money after bad to sustain this failed science fair project as long as possible, if only to save face.
Or maybe in the vain hope that they can get back some of their investment when Iniquity floats its IPO -- as if anybody on Wall Street would be interested! Seeing their own stocks tanking for some time now should have disabused the consolidators of the fanciful notion that Wall street is interested in radio in any form.
You can't blame Jones for wanting to get some of the money being thrown away on this folly for themselves, especially when, being only program suppliers, they don't have to invest in new transmitters -- or pay Iniquity's licensing fees!
And of course, they'll have the talking points down pat.
They know that Clear Channel and the other big stakeholders are so pig-headed that they can't face the truth -- that Iniquity's Huge Disaster Radio system is abjectly failing in the marketplace -- and that they'll keep throwing good money after bad to sustain this failed science fair project as long as possible, if only to save face.
Or maybe in the vain hope that they can get back some of their investment when Iniquity floats its IPO -- as if anybody on Wall Street would be interested! Seeing their own stocks tanking for some time now should have disabused the consolidators of the fanciful notion that Wall street is interested in radio in any form.
You can't blame Jones for wanting to get some of the money being thrown away on this folly for themselves, especially when, being only program suppliers, they don't have to invest in new transmitters -- or pay Iniquity's licensing fees!
And of course, they'll have the talking points down pat.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
radioskeptic said:
Well put. I've seen plenty of clueless executives in my time, who think they can change the laws of physics or the marketplace by sheer force of their own will. They usually end up getting promoted out of harms way or ousted. This Huge Disaster radio reminds me of the "new coke" or "PC Junior" ad campaigns.
rbrucecarter5 said:
Yes but at least New Coke realized their mistake and backpedaled very quickly and called their old coke "classic" and stayed successful. Perhaps "AM and FM Classic" might be a way for them to get out and save face ;D although it is a little late in the game for that. I think Huge Disaster it will stay until it crashes big time (at least to us, the general public will read a little blurb on the financial page).
KB1OKL said:
At which point, the reader will yawn, flip the paper over to the crossword puzzle, and happily continue listening to his wifi/wimax radio.
K
kyscott
Guest
rbrucecarter5 said:
They don't understand that it's content, not delivery. The content of Coke changed and it went over like a turd in a punchbowl. You can have the latest, greatest equipment and delivery method, but if you don't have anything they want to listen to, you are just wasting electricity and raising the noise floor. However the groups don't want to spend the money on personality and talent. If consumers want to hear nothing but music, they have an ipod for that. Radio must give consumers a reason to listen.
kyscott said:
Yes and their is nothing wrong with the delivery system in place now, FM is fine, AM has pinched audio quality which could be easily fixed with better receivers for the most part. Imagine if Coke had decided that they must get new turbo trucks to get their New Coke to the market more quickly and spent millions on advertising that? (Coke trucks with a boob jobs) They would have been long gone. They were smart enough to realize that New Coke was a mistake and went back to their old formula which had nothing wrong with it in the first place. The reason there has been no uproar over IBOC is that 99.9% of the people have no idea it exists and what it does and most importantly couldn't care less if they did. They will though if the 10 db increase is granted to FM which is quite doubtful, that will be the turd hitting the fan. There are supposedly 400,000 IBOC receivers out now (probably gathering dust someplace in Goodwills with 6 dollar price tags ;D unless of of course if they live in that Mecca of IBOC: NYC, where there are IBOC celebrations every night out in the streets) out of 800,000,000. There will be some pretty PO'ed people when their FM stations are getting hashed on.
kyscott said:
In my market the HD 2's and 3's provide programing not available elsewhere. If you want country, your only choice is an HD 2. Same for "Smooth Jazz". One of the HD 2's plays the music and other material from WNEW FM (A very popular AOR station in the 70's). WFUV plays music all week long. On the weekends they have sports and ethnic shows. On their HD 2 they broadcast music shows along the lines of what they play during the week, all weekened. These HD 2 shows include personalities. If the Jack format is your thing, it's available via WCBS FM's HD 2 channel. WPLJ's HD 3 channel plays Scott Shannons True Oldies channel, music otherwise not available in NYC. WCBS FM's format doesn't play the older music any longer so if you want 1950/60's oldies, its the place to go. These are all formats not available anywhere else in the market, so when you say its about programing and these stations are providing programing otherwise not available in the market, why would this be a negative thing? Without these signals there would be less varied programing in our market.
I guess all is not wonderful in NYC then? I can get 50/60's oldies and country music here in MA if I want it on AM no less. All sorts of music on FM especially between 88 and 92 with NPR (who made that unfortunate choice of course) and public radio. We have it all and on the main channels.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
R.F. Burns said:
I don't think anybody is disputing that it solves some technical problems in New York, and there are probably enough HD stations that there are a few - possibly creative - alternatives that exist.
However - as soon as that 10X power increase is granted to HD sidebands on adjacent frequencies, from the look of this there will be stations being stomped on all over the band:
http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/vacant?select=city&city=New+York&state=NY
The 10X power increase is least viable in places like major metro areas where the dial is jam packed with stations, and more viable in rural areas where adjacents may be hundreds of miles away. BUT- Never underestimate the havoc a little skip can cause - and we haven't had a favorable sunspot cycle for skip since the advent of HD transmission. You get into a good solar cycle for skip, and that 10X power increase is going to be a NIGHTMARE broadcasters really don't want to deal with!!!
I wouldn't lose any sleep over the vaunted 10db increase, rbruce. There is still a lot of debate going on about the legal and engineering concerns. A Class B or C operating with 10db digital is going to be enormously expensive to install and operate, with immense waste of electrical power. The NAB is internally split on the issue and NPR does not support the increase.
The smart money is saying these days that any increase in HD digital is going to end up 6db or less, with most stations increasing digital 2 or 3db on a case-by-case basis.
This raises the question: why bother? Many engineering sources were opining that, notwithstanding recent Alliance hype, even the 10db increase won't produce that great an improvement in congested urban areas or with building penetration. Less than that hardly seems worthwhile, even if there WAS widespread demand for HD. Which there isn't.
The smart money is saying these days that any increase in HD digital is going to end up 6db or less, with most stations increasing digital 2 or 3db on a case-by-case basis.
This raises the question: why bother? Many engineering sources were opining that, notwithstanding recent Alliance hype, even the 10db increase won't produce that great an improvement in congested urban areas or with building penetration. Less than that hardly seems worthwhile, even if there WAS widespread demand for HD. Which there isn't.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
Savage said:
Not to mention the stress it will place on combiners, transmission lines, and antennas design for the lower power levels. I can see cases where a 10X improvement would be almost a new buildout from scratch. For how many potential listeners?! At this point I would think it would be a hard sell to station management, given consumer acceptance levels.
Most of the digital powers, right now, don't propagate into the reflective layers of the atmosphere under skip conditions. But a lot are right on the threshold. Warm summer days are starting, and tropos will be more frequent. They are the bane of existance for station engineers, when suddenly their signal is beseiged by stations hundreds of miles away. IBOC sidebands effectively triple the number of potential interfering stations. And it won't be a swap to some other music format. It will be a swap to static - which will be interpreted by listeners as a bad signal, not skip.
In a large proportion of installations a 10db increase for HD-FM will indeed require a rebuild of the entire RF plant. And increases in tower lease costs, property tax assessments, building rent and on and on. For a "C" we could be talking a million bucks - and as you succinctly point out, to reach an audience so minuscule a fraction of the investment would be nixed by sane management. This is not a viable proposition in an era of collapsing revenues for major signals these days.
You are also correct in predicting listener reaction: the public won't say, hey, it's just a temporary glitch during a new tech rollout. If we're just patient, the market and regulators will work it all out. No: they'll just say, terrestrial radio sucks, and tune out. This is the insidious nature of the effects of HD interference noted in another thread. You don't know the damage is occurring until it's too late.
You are also correct in predicting listener reaction: the public won't say, hey, it's just a temporary glitch during a new tech rollout. If we're just patient, the market and regulators will work it all out. No: they'll just say, terrestrial radio sucks, and tune out. This is the insidious nature of the effects of HD interference noted in another thread. You don't know the damage is occurring until it's too late.
R.F. Burns said:
Not so. Anyone here (or with a computer and broadband internet connection) has their choice of hundreds of thousands of internet streams, podcasts, downloads, website streaming links, etc. Plus there is TV, cable, ipods, CD's, records, sat. radio, sat. TV, short wave, etc.
No lack of format variety or content almost anywhere on the planet.
Savage said:
Again, Savage is right-on! BTW, I recently nominated him to head the FCC with Tom Wells as his Audio Division dude in an Indiana thread... ‘Keep the faith, Bob!
Savage said:
I view it as an "economic relief program" to benefit the following:
1) Transmitter manufacturers
2) Antenna manufacturers
3) The Carborundum Company (whose products are used in dummy loads)
4) HVAC contractors (we need to keep those inefficient transmitters and reject loads cool!)
5) Electric utilities
6) Tower site landlords
7) and, of course, investors in iBiquity.
On Thursday, I attended a session on HD Radio at the PAB engineering conference in Hershey, presented by my friend Tom Walker. For those of you who haven't met Tom, he is a great guy -- in spite of the fact that we have different points of view on digital radio. Let's say he is "just following orders", I'm following my own common sense, and leave it at that.
A few notes I took down during Tom's talk:
To implement the proposed 10 dB boost, high level combined systems will require 5 - 6 dB couplers, rather than the 10 dB couplers presently in use. These will waste an additional 40% of the analog transmitter's output, so if your FM transmitter is currently operating at 25 kW, it will need to be replaced with one that can produce 35 kW. The output of the digital transmitter in a high-level system will also need to be increased by 5 dB... so if it's currently doing 3 kW, it will need to come up to 10.
Because of this inefficiency, iBiquity suggests that a better plan for Class B and C stations would be space combining, but this will require an additional antenna mounted at least 70% of the height of the main. The elevation patterns should also be matched if there's significant population or a major highway near the tower (if the main antenna is 8-bay, the digital antenna will also require 8 bays.) So a structural upgrade or complete replacement of the tower may be necessary.
Some discouraging news for audiophiles: iBiquity's new Exporter software will allow the HD-1 bitrate to be reduced from 48k to 32k, which then makes room for two multicast channels, also at 32k. My ears cringed when they heard this announcement.
The presentation concluded with a discussion of three -- count them, THREE -- ways to get Return On Investment from HD Radio:
1) Revenue from multicast channels after iBiquity takes their cut. I expect FM broadcasters will be waiting a L-O-N-G time for this money, AM stations don't even have the opportunity.
2) Revenue from iTunes tagging (if a listener makes a purchase while listening to your station with their iPod attached to a compatible HD receiver) How much are we talking about -- a couple of cents per song?
3) Sales of HD Receivers on station websites.
There you have it.
Quoting my old friend Bud Wertheimer: "I'd like to have some of what THEY'RE smoking."
1. Revenue from MULTICAST CHANNELS? Earth to HD fans: the problem is radio can't sell the MAIN CHANNEL these days! HD Radio multiplies self-defeating approaches. To RF self-interference, HD proponents seriously want to add "self-competition" or fragmentation of the sales effort! Most sales departments are already overstressed selling multiple stations in a cluster and web content in a shrinking radio revenue environment. If you're involved in sales you know the game these days consists of stealing revenue from your competitors more than "making the pie bigger." Besides, the audience on the subs is so minuscule they're not likely to be significant revenue producers for a LONG time, because they don't offer value to clients unless they're practically free. (BTW, did anybody at iBiquity notice the Dow was down 400 points for the week??)
2. Revenue from I-TUNES tagging. Yep. Buying music off of HD stations is about as convenient and common-sensical as using a Vise-Grip and long-nosed pliers to tie your shoes. If listeners want to buy music heard on the radio, it's far easier to just download what you want from the iTunes store. They're already trained to do that. What's the incentive to use the tagging procedure?
3. Revenue from HD RECEIVERS ON STATION WEBSITES? I'm not quite sure how to read this. Is it just another crack-addict dumb idea - putting radio stations in the retail electronics business - or is it pure desperation combined with an admission that HD has lost the sales war at retail? Maybe both? I don't think I'm far from the mark when I say that the number of HD radios sold off station websites has to be virtually ZERO. Think about the logistics this would involve: the station would have to get a state certificate to start collecting sales tax, and submit quarterly sales tax returns (even if sales ARE zero.) Somebody at the station would have to provide customer service, shipping, packing, returns (experience has taught us there will be many) and payment processing. As station staffs shrink, who's going to run the retail receiver operation? The overnight jock? The morning show producer? The sales assistant? Oh, I forgot. They were all let go in the last downsizing.
The most wild-eyed forecasts from the above three sources wouldn't even sniff the paint, much less inflict a scratch, on the capital expense of increasing a single B or C class FM to 10db-digital IBOC-FM. C'mon, you're talking about a million bucks here! And PERMANENT increases in rent, taxes, utilities, maintenance. Offsetting that would be, from the above three bright ideas, quarterly revenue I'd be comfortable forecasting at maybe $39. That's why I say: 10db digital isn't gonna happen outside of a couple of show-horse stations, probably owned by either Crawford or CBS, the lone remaining IBOC zealots out there.
1. Revenue from MULTICAST CHANNELS? Earth to HD fans: the problem is radio can't sell the MAIN CHANNEL these days! HD Radio multiplies self-defeating approaches. To RF self-interference, HD proponents seriously want to add "self-competition" or fragmentation of the sales effort! Most sales departments are already overstressed selling multiple stations in a cluster and web content in a shrinking radio revenue environment. If you're involved in sales you know the game these days consists of stealing revenue from your competitors more than "making the pie bigger." Besides, the audience on the subs is so minuscule they're not likely to be significant revenue producers for a LONG time, because they don't offer value to clients unless they're practically free. (BTW, did anybody at iBiquity notice the Dow was down 400 points for the week??)
2. Revenue from I-TUNES tagging. Yep. Buying music off of HD stations is about as convenient and common-sensical as using a Vise-Grip and long-nosed pliers to tie your shoes. If listeners want to buy music heard on the radio, it's far easier to just download what you want from the iTunes store. They're already trained to do that. What's the incentive to use the tagging procedure?
3. Revenue from HD RECEIVERS ON STATION WEBSITES? I'm not quite sure how to read this. Is it just another crack-addict dumb idea - putting radio stations in the retail electronics business - or is it pure desperation combined with an admission that HD has lost the sales war at retail? Maybe both? I don't think I'm far from the mark when I say that the number of HD radios sold off station websites has to be virtually ZERO. Think about the logistics this would involve: the station would have to get a state certificate to start collecting sales tax, and submit quarterly sales tax returns (even if sales ARE zero.) Somebody at the station would have to provide customer service, shipping, packing, returns (experience has taught us there will be many) and payment processing. As station staffs shrink, who's going to run the retail receiver operation? The overnight jock? The morning show producer? The sales assistant? Oh, I forgot. They were all let go in the last downsizing.
The most wild-eyed forecasts from the above three sources wouldn't even sniff the paint, much less inflict a scratch, on the capital expense of increasing a single B or C class FM to 10db-digital IBOC-FM. C'mon, you're talking about a million bucks here! And PERMANENT increases in rent, taxes, utilities, maintenance. Offsetting that would be, from the above three bright ideas, quarterly revenue I'd be comfortable forecasting at maybe $39. That's why I say: 10db digital isn't gonna happen outside of a couple of show-horse stations, probably owned by either Crawford or CBS, the lone remaining IBOC zealots out there.
Savage said:
That one has to get the "Stupid is as Stupid Does Award" for 2008. Retail electronics is a very tough business. If giants like Best Buy and Radio Shack can only get rid of these things by blowing them out for less than cost, what makes anyone think that radio stations would have more success with selling them? Radio stations know very little about retail sales and are not equipped to participate in that aspect of business.
A few NPR type stations have dabbled in this, but I haven't heard of any huge success stories. Most of them use an order fulfillment company who does all the work. It is the same folks who send out the coffee mugs, tee shirts and other premiums that you get for various membership levels. The only reason it works is because to get the BA Receptor, they expect a pledge of $500 or $1000. Maybe more. At those rates, they can afford to sub out the premium distribution.
Back to the real world, any radio station would have to compete price-wise with the existing consumer electronics retail market in their area. That could mean competing with your current sponsors or prospective sponsors. I can't see that working out very well.
Must be some good stuff they are passing around the room…..
And, of course, all these people Play Freebird lists, the manufacturers and tradesmen who are building the facilities AND iBiquity, all get their money upfront while the station owner has to figure out how to recoup his/her investment over the long term.
At the NAB's HD Radio conference the suggestion was made to treat HD2/3 streams as separate stations and hire the extra personnel to run them as such. Good idea, but very few stations nowadays have the money to hire more people. Then there is the "sharecropper" approach (to quote FCC Commissioner Copps) of leasing or selling the HD2/3 "stations" to other entities.
Tom Ray did mention the idea of HD-AM being split into two digital streams of 16K each. Wouldn't that sound great?
I'm all in favor of AM/FM going digital but HD Radio is a disaster, particularly for broadcasters.
C5
At the NAB's HD Radio conference the suggestion was made to treat HD2/3 streams as separate stations and hire the extra personnel to run them as such. Good idea, but very few stations nowadays have the money to hire more people. Then there is the "sharecropper" approach (to quote FCC Commissioner Copps) of leasing or selling the HD2/3 "stations" to other entities.
Tom Ray did mention the idea of HD-AM being split into two digital streams of 16K each. Wouldn't that sound great?
I'm all in favor of AM/FM going digital but HD Radio is a disaster, particularly for broadcasters.
C5
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